Iraq brings back more than 300 Iraqi refugees from Turkey: Ministry

Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement (MoMD) on Wednesday announced the return of 317 refugees from Turkey as part of the voluntary program to bring displaced citizens home.

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement (MoMD) on Wednesday announced the return of 317 refugees from Turkey as part of the voluntary program to bring displaced citizens home.

Talib Asghar, Director General of Refugee Affairs at the ministry, said that his department brought back the new wave of refugees who had been seeking shelter in “Ankara, Samsun, and Çorum provinces.”

The transfer of the refugees was carried out in coordination with the Ministry of Transportation, which provided the buses that drove the Iraqi nationals from multiple locations in Turkey into the Kurdistan Region through the Ibrahim Khalil international border crossing and then continued towards the refugees' various areas of origin.  

In late September, the MoMD announced the arrival of 155 refugees who had also been living in Ankara, Samsun, and Çorum. 

Read More: Iraq assists in return of 155 Iraqi refugees from Turkey

Following the emergence of the terror group and its expansion over much of Iraq in 2014, six million Iraqis were displaced, with thousands fleeing abroad to neighboring and western countries.

Since the beginning of 2019, the federal government in Bagdhad has facilitated the return of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees to settle back into their home towns, but has also been accused of blocking some populations from their homes while forcing others into areas to which they were afraid, or otherwise unwilling, to return.

Read More: Iraq blocks displaced families from returning home, forces others to return: HRW

Thousands of refugees and IDPs continue to resist returning to their towns due to serious security concerns and a lack of infrastructure and basic government services. 

The MoMD, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and other Iraqi governmental bodies have a longstanding policy to refuse the nonvoluntary return of Iraqi nationals from abroad.

Editing by John J. Catherine